Steve Jackson

Don’t you wish you could get +2 Bonus in life when you sang your own theme music? Now you can in this fun and fast-paced tabletop game called Munchkin, by creator Steve Jackson. This blog post is going to go over how to play the game in a few basic ways. Read on to find out how you can have your very own wandering monster.

A couple of years ago that 1 Geeky Guy (a.k.a. my husband) bought a game called Munchkin. We had played with friends when we lived in Idaho many years ago and it seemed to really stuck with him as a fun game. To be honest, when I first started playing, I wasn’t the biggest fan. But, now whenever we get together with fellow gamers, it’s a go-to game for us.

Similar to games like Killer Bunnies, Munchkin is a fun throwback to the original tabletop, Dungeon’s and Dragon’s (which I have actually played). The endgame of Munchkin is to reach the 10th level (or 11th if you are playing with dungeons expansion pack) of your characters development. All you need to do to reach that level is battle silly monsters and gather treasure cards.

You have two decks, a ‘door’ deck and a ‘treasure’ deck. In a typical tabletop game (like D&D) you would enter the dungeon through a door and encounter certain traps or monsters and gain experience points. In Munchkin, you turn over the door card to reveal certain outcomes (like the surly fellow below) and earn treasures if you defeat said monsters.

Like other cards games there is set limit of cards you can have in your hand. If you are playing this version of Munchkin, you can have only 5 cards in your hand (that is unless you have the Dwarf Race card which allows you to have 6). You will encounter cards that will give your armor, race, class and bonuses; all of which will allow you to defeat monsters and beat your fellow Munchkins at the game.

We found that an easy way to keep track of your levels in the game is to use counters like beans, game pieces or pennies, like we did below.

In later expansion packs you can introduce different types of playing cards like Portals and Dungeons to make the game more interesting and complex. Check out this uber-fun dungeon card I pulled when playing.

I mean, who wouldn’t want extra treasure? Like I mentioned earlier, there are also certain treasure cards that will cause you to go up a level, and they can be anywhere from that reads “Hurt GM’s Brain: Instead of going up a level, you may use this card at any time you are not in combat. Discard it, and then go through the discards and pick any one Race, Class, Accent, Power, Loyalty, Style, Training, or Mojo card,” or this slightly Buddhist-inspired one.

There are many cards like the one below that made me giggle for several minutes.

And here we are at Thanksgiving with our friends playing our latest game:

Lari intently looking at her cards to see if she will be able to kick our butts!

It looks like she might have gotten the card!

Their adorable 4-year old. She is so funny and makes me crack-up every time I see her. Her faces are priceless and she always entertains. During the game, she came in the room dressed up like this.

Wearing mom’s scarf, Dad’s shoes and other odds and ends from her dress-up closet. She told us she was a ghost, and boy does she love them. Last time I visited, she drew me this picture.

It’s a bus ghost, mining ghost and golf ghost!

Mommy being scared by the ghost.

That 1 Geeky Guy telling me not to cheat off his cards.

We gave my friends daughter a bunch of pennies to keep her busy during the game so that she felt she was participating in it with us.

I never thought I’d be so into a tabletop game, but this is one of my favorites. To check out more about how it is played check out this episode of TableTop with Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, Sandeep Parikh and Munchkin creator, Steve Jackson.